Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Madame Bey's Boys

In the golden age of boxing, it was the boxing camp where fighters prepared for battle. It is a forgotten part of boxing history. A camp was where boxing’s best prepared with colleagues for upcoming battles. They lived, ate, and trained together. Of all the boxing camps, the most famous was run by a woman, a woman who was a former socialite and friend to presidents. It was called Bey’s Training Camp. When a journalist asked her how a former aristocrat, socialite, and friend of presidents could operate a training camp for boxers in a brutal sport, she drew upon her past experiences for a succinct reply.

“Personally,” Madame Bey told the journalist, “I like men who fight in the open. I told a magazine writer the other day that the velvet glove of politics is infinitely more dangerous than the four-ounce glove of pugilism, and that is the best way I can express it.”

Maybe you can find one of your favorite boxers, trainers, managers, or celebrities, that attended the camp from the list below.

The article below was originally published on www.GardenStateLegacy.com in GSL Issue 36, June 2017. Since that date, I have discovered photographic evidence that Rocky Marciano and James J. Corbett visited the camp, bringing the total number of heavyweight champions to no fewer than 14 and International Boxing Hall of Fame inductees to 80. I also talked to people who remembered the camp, including Floyd Patterson’s doctor in 1959 and a man who sold soda for Madame Bey at a nickel a bottle as a boy in the mid-1930s.. He remembered Billy Conn, Tony Galento, and Max Schmeling. Since writing the book Madame Bey’s: Home to Boxing Legends, I have been given the opportunity to meet with many people that had attended the camp and the stories they remember."Madame Bey's Boys" by Gene Pantalone